X VI International Women in Black Meeting Resolution
Delegates from Argentina, Armenia, Belgium, Chile, Colombia, Congo, Guatemala, India, Israel, Italy, Palestine, Serbia, Spain, UK, Uruguay, USA
We are an international movement of feminist activists in a world confronting different situations of oppression: armed conflicts, wars taking place in the world made by our state´s armies.
We reject the so called ´humanitarian´ and ´preventative´ wars, the violence in post conflict situations that continues war in different ways, the continuation in power of dictators and murderers – staying in power through legal tricks – and the immunity of soldiers and war criminals.
The social wars generated by neo-liberal capitalism affect everyone, especially poor people. All these kinds of violence are generated by patriarchy, which is fed and supported by wars, violence and injustice and has never given up war-like solutions. In all these situations there is structural and systematic violence against women. Social control is assured by control over women´s bodies. We reject the continuum of violence against women – in the home, at work, on the streets.
Our feminist and anti-militarist movement works in a nonviolent way and makes the following proposals:
1. To start a global campaign in the last week of October for the abolition of immunity for members of UN ´Peace Missions´ (´blue helmets´). It has been proved that they are involved in sexual crimes against civilians´ in many war zones: Congo, Bosnia, Haiti, Guatemala and other countries.
2. To abolish the impunity of war criminals involved in military interventions, ´humanitarian´ wars, dictatorships and social wars against poor people and prevent these criminals coming back to power. That´s why we demand the legal system acts against impunity, and why we work and will continue working with a feminist approach, including courts of women, truth, justice and reparation commissions etc. We propose to establish the start of this action against impunity on 24th May 2014, International Day for Peace and Disarmament.
3. To keep vigils on May 15th each year to remember the Palestinian Naqba in 1948
We declare our support for Palestinian women prisoners and for boycott, divestment and sanctions against the Israeli war economy. We want to ban the weapons trade, especially in conflict areas.
We also declare our support for the Colombian peace process, following the proposals made by Women for Peace coalitions integrated in Ruta Pacifica, and have sent a letter agreed at the meeting to the peace negotiations in Havana.
We make our own the sentence for genocide dictated against the dictator Efraín Rios Montt in the city of Guatemala. This is the first time a dictator is judged and sentenced as genocide in a national court. This was a huge achievement for the women, always demanding and fighting for Justice, Truth and Reconciliation.
We support the processes of recovering historical memories of women who were victims of crimes during wars, dictatorships and genocide.
We reaffirm autonomy and freedom of choice over our own bodies, in terms of sexual and reproductive rights. We will continue to support the peace initiatives organized by the different WiB groups and partners according to their socio-economic context, respecting the autonomy of each group in the network.
Montevideo, 24th August 2013
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